Neft Daşları is an industrial settlement in Baku, Azerbaijan. The settlement forms part of the municipality of Çilov-Neft Daşları in the Khazar raion. It lies 100 km (62 mi) away from the Azerbaijani capital Baku, and 55 km (34 mi) from the nearest shore in the Caspian Sea. A full town on the sea with up to 5000 inhabitants, it was the first oil platform in Azerbaijan, and the first operating offshore oil platform in the world, incorporating numerous drilling platforms.
Image source: By Bruno Girin on Flickr – Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9549521
One of the reasons why the first generation of underwater stations came to an end in the 80’s was the conlusion that it is more effective to use decompression chambers on board of a support vessel instead of placing divers on the bottom of the sea. The oil industry just did not see any reason for undersea stations. Therefore it was surprising that China announced in 2012 that they planned to build an undersea mining station of 60 meters length 
